Project Update 7 - Feb. 20th
Original Post by Chord - Friday February 19th, 2016
Hello again PSF. Busy times on my end, but I got to spend some time hacking around with the PlanetSide client tonight.
Friday Night Hacking
Core combat isn't enabled on the server side, but the PlanetSide client doesn't care! I messed around with map loading state changes and I was able to fake load some cave maps, while being networked on a real continent. To other people it would look quite strange as I would be flying around ignoring any collision detection. Somethings I learned about the game from tonight:
- All physics and collision detection is clientside. If this were to be removed, then walls, doors, or the floor wouldn't stop you
- Water damage is server-side
- Nearly all of the interesting GM commands are patched out of the client. Like the code has literally been compiled out. This is quite sad as I suspect the server probably has more than a fair share of strange bugs regarding these commands.
- There are multiple embedded command processors within planetside that allows for high level actions to to take place. For example, the command for loading a map is 'psc_loadmap'. This goes for the creation of all game objects as well. Logging the calls to these command processors should help figure out how the game is running
- The /paintball command is locked behind a special bit on the client, but once enabled it allows the creation of floating text anywhere in the world. It's simply a debug tool and nothing else.
- The cave maps are located in the PlanetSide/expansion1 folder and are prefixed as ugd. Example: ugd01
- When loading in to a cave map while actually running on a bigger continent, the cave map is always towards the bottom left corner of the overworld map. This is where PlanetSide's (0, 0) coordinate lies.
- There is a /spectator command in the client, but unfortunately it is patched out
Here are some screenshots: Image Image Image Image Image Image Image
Website News My site is now fully backed up with a disaster recovery plan in place. I can now sleep easy. PSF will never die, NCGauss. Sorry for all of the horrible spam that has cropped up recently. There is a dedicated and passionate group of people who want this project to burn. We should expect more things like this in the future. Active couter-measures are in place and I keep quite a close eye on server health.
Login Server Coding Not much has gotten done in this area unfortunately. This is quite important, but the momentum has been lost. Spring break is coming up for me soon and I hope to get some serious coding in then. At least what I have done so far is open source. I need all of the help I can get in this area. Code doesn't write itself.
Packet Captures We are nearly at 10 million total packets captured! Holy crap, great work team!
PlanetSide Forever Discord If you didn't know, PSF has its own Discord server, courtesy of Naeadil. This has probably limited the number of posts on the forums, but it's certainly a lot easier to chat than to write up a lengthy post. Glad this is helping keep the community together. If you are not in it already, ask me or Naeadil for an invite.